How much of each vehicle is recycled depends on the model, age and condition of the vehicle and what sort of wrecker it goes to. Auto recyclers – like Hank’s Auto Wreckers in St. Clements and Paleshi Motors in Elmira – pull usable parts off the vehicle and resell them, while scrap metal dealers sell the cars to shredders for metal recovery. About 500 cars roll into the dismantling bays at Hank’s Auto Wreckers every year.

The recycling process starts when a car is unloaded in the lot. First all of the usable parts are inventoried using a laptop and computerized inventory system. When all the parts - usually between 100 and 150 - have been inventoried, the list is uploaded to the company’s server.

Most of the parts are sold to yards and repair shops. Everything Hank’s has in inventory is listed on a popular used parts website and they’ve sold parts to every continent except Antarctica – including, once, a taillight to the Vatican.

The scrapping industry is driven by demand for used parts, but it follows the same technological road as the auto manufacturing industry, just eight or 10 years behind.

Cars rolling off the assembly line today are immensely more complicated than they were 40 or 50 years ago, packing more options into a smaller space. Things like air bags, antilock brakes and air conditioning didn’t exist then but are standard today.

“Years ago, it was 12 to 20 pieces you’d inventory,” said Mike Nissen.

New parts were so cheap that no one would bother trying to track down a used one unless it was some something major, like a transmission. Hank’s Auto Wreckers didn’t need a computerized inventory system because Hank could keep track of where everything was in his head.

With 100,000 parts on the lot, that’s just not possible anymore. Not only do they remove more parts from each vehicle, but there’s more variation between makes and model years. And cars just last longer; with manufacturers offering 10-year, 100,000-kilometer warranties, they have to keep parts in stock longer than they used to.

Recyclers like Hank’s and Paleshi Motors tend to deal in newer vehicles. If your four-year-old Corolla gets crunched in a collision, there are lots of other four-year-old Corollas still on the road that can use the parts. If you drive your jalopy until it’s a rolling rust wagon, it’s more likely to go straight to a crusher, because there’s little demand for parts that old.

Scrap dealers can offer higher prices for old cars than recyclers can; they don’t have the expenses involved in dismantling and draining cars before sending them to the crusher. Cars that are crushed without being de-polluted can leach those fluids back into the environment.

“Right now, our estimates are that less than half of vehicles are de-polluted before going to a crushing state,” said Steve Fletcher, president of the Ontario Automotive Recyclers Association.

That’s where the Retire Your Ride program comes in. Owners of 1995 and older vehicles that are still running can turn them in for $300 cash or a rebate on a newer vehicle. The idea is to get older, high-polluting cars off the road.
It’s no coincidence that Retire Your Ride originated with recyclers. It stems partly from honest concern for the environment, but it’s also good for business. To receive cars through Retire Your Ride, wreckers have to follow a national code of practice to ensure that hazardous materials are dealt with properly. That means salvage is directed away from scrap dealers and toward recyclers, who are set up for dismantling and de-polluting cars.
“It makes it economically viable for us to handle them. We would never buy some of these vehicles coming through [without Retire Your Ride],” explained Derek Nissen.

Regulations a key part in scrapping

Steve Fletcher believes that the national code of practice developed for Retire Your Ride will eventually become an industry standard; if you want to handle scrap cars, you’ll be required to follow certain standards. In the meantime, membership in OARA isn’t required to be in the scrapping business, and OARA can’t tell non-members how to run their businesses.

“Right now there’s not a lot of great oversight and that’s why we have an industry where cars can flow the way the lowest common denominator and the highest amount of dollars can encourage,” he said. “If you don’t have the properly regulated industry that’s processing the vehicles, you end up with a legitimate business saying ‘I can pay $50 for the vehicle because I have to do all these things to it and record it’ and the unlicensed backyarder can say ‘I’ll pay $200 for that because I don’t worry about ozone, I don’t worry about oil, I don’t worry about mercury, I don’t worry about records.’”

Where self-regulation stops, environmental legislation takes over. The next big driver of change to Ontario’s scrapping industry will be updates to the province’s Waste Diversion Act. Two years ago, the government launched a review of the 2002 act, a process that is ongoing. One concept the government is studying is extended producer responsibility, which ties the manufacturer of a product into its recycling or disposal. The idea is to encourage manufacturers to design products so they can be recycled and make sure that the recycling happens upon disposal.
“The provincial government has sent signals to manufacturers and recyclers that we need to look at EPR because not all vehicles are being handled properly,” Fletcher said.

Aside from manufacturers and recyclers, there’s another party who’s going to be increasingly asked to take a role in a vehicle’s last rites: the person sitting in the driver’s seat. You may not have given much thought to what happens to your car when it won’t transport you anymore, but you should. A car is the single biggest item the average consumer will discard. Even more than sorting your glass and cans and dropping off your old cell phone, you should share some responsibility for what happens to it.

“Ultimately there’s a role for the public to play,” Fletcher said. “They don’t really know where their car goes and what happens to it, and if somebody says ‘we’ll pay you top dollar for your vehicle and treat it properly,’ well, what does that mean?”

Eight-year-old Sarah Lucier and her brothers Owen and Evan have spent their summer reading Pippi Longstocking books, eating lingonberry jam and listening to Swedish lessons on their iPods.

The family is moving to Sweden for two years, taking the opportunity offered by Paul Lucier’s job at Research in Motion. He will be RIM’s managing director in Europe and Russia, focused on developing emerging markets in Poland, Russia, Ireland and the Nordics.

Paul and Nancy Lucier and their children Evan, Owen and Sarah leave next week for a two-year stay in Sweden. They’ve been preparing in advance, attempting to get a jump on the transition.

They’ll be living in Bromma, a suburb of Stockholm famous for being the birthplace of NHL star Mats Sundin. That was exciting news for 10-year-old Owen, a hockey player himself. Owen and his younger brother Evan will be playing with Göta Traneberg, one of the biggest clubs in Sweden, on a twin ice pad five minutes from their house.

A week before moving day, the kids were experiencing a bellyful of emotions: scared, excited, sad and nervous.

“I can’t believe I’ll be seven when I get back,” Evan said.

Evan celebrates his birthday just a few days after they arrive in Sweden, and his parents had to reassure him that he would still get a birthday cake.

The Luciers will be back in Canada for Christmas and for a visit next summer, but most of the next two years will be spent overseas. The kids are most worried about missing family and friends, so they’ve handed out cards to each of their classmates with their phone number, address and email address. The family also plans to start a blog, so they can post regular updates about life in Sweden.

They’ve also done some research before arriving in Sweden, looking up their house on Google Maps and searching out pictures of their school and teachers. Owen, Sarah and Evan will be going to an international school where lessons are taught in English and three-quarters of the students are from outside Sweden.
The family’s house is a few minutes from a tram stop, and the kids will be taking the tram and subway to school. Given the excellent public transportation system in Stockholm, the Luciers hope to make do with one car while in Sweden.

One good thing that will help ease the transition is that most Swedes speak excellent English. Students learn English in school and movies and television shows aren’t dubbed into Swedish, so they have very little accent.

“The bad thing is they don’t celebrate Halloween,” said a scandalized Sarah.

But the Luciers will be bringing Halloween with them; they’ve packed all their decorations, and their grandmother has promised to send them bags of candy to hand out to the neighbours.

The whole family is looking forward to the raft of outdoor activities that are popular in Sweden: hiking, canoeing, kayaking, cross-country skiing, skating and fishing on Lake Mälaren. Sweden has a tradition of common access – known as allemansrätten – that gives everyone the right to enjoy uncultivated land. That means anyone can hike, camp, use drinking water and pick wildflowers, berries and mushrooms throughout the country, even on private property.

The European lifestyle is one of the big attractions for Paul, but the move will also mean more time at home. He’s been doing a lot of travelling overseas for the past few years and spending as many as 10 days away from home every month. Living in Sweden will make it possible to travel to London or Moscow on business and return the same day.

“This is a chance to spend a little more quality time with family,” he said.

Despite the butterflies as moving day approaches, Paul and Nancy are confident that the next two years will be good ones for the whole family.

“One of the big reasons we want to go is so the kids can experience living in a foreign country,” Paul said.
“They’re going to have lots of opportunities to experience new things.”

“We spent a lot of time since we finished [last season] recruiting, so we’re expecting a lot of changes this year. We could have up to 14 new faces on the team this year,” said head coach Kevin Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick said he’s been getting a number of calls and emails from players that are moving to the area for university or are graduating from local AAA programs. It’s an encouraging sign, especially given the Jacks’ struggles last season, when they went 7-23-6 and missed the playoffs.

Fitzpatrick admitted that 2009/2010 was a dispiriting season but noted that he faced a learning curve in his first year back as coach after many years, and the team was challenged by significant illnesses and injuries.

“It was a disappointment and I’d be the first to admit when the season ended I was glad, but there were a lot of encouraging things too,” he said. “It became apparent in January that we had to move on and we started to build for this year. I would guess that we’ve been to more than 100 games since January looking for potential recruits.”

The Jacks have a number of experienced forwards returning from last season, as well as goaltender Kurt Martin.

“He had an outstanding season last season as a rookie, so there’s no reason to think that’s not going to continue,” Fitzpatrick said of Martin.

Four other players the team is counting on to make an impact are Rob Hinschberger, Mike Moggy, Read Shantz and Eric Parr. Hinschberger will wear the captain’s “C” on his sweater next season, and Moggy, Shantz and Parr will sport ‘A’s.

Hinschberger was a natural choice after coming to the Jacks from the Elmira Sugar Kings last year, the coach said.

“Rob’s a real hard worker, he gives everything on the ice, he’s got a great attitude and outlook. He came in and found a niche in the dressing room where he fit in. It became apparent as the season went on watching him at practice, watching him in the dressing room and during the game that he had a real gift for being a leader.”

The Jacks open their season Sept. 18 against old rivals Tavistock, with the home opener Oct. 9. The Southern Ontario Junior Hockey League has been reorganized this year, with the 15 teams split between two conferences.

Fitzpatrick admits he isn’t delighted with the shuffle; while old rivalries against Tavistock and Ayr will continue, the Jacks won’t face traditionally strong teams like Thamesford, North Middlesex and Mt. Brydges until after the first round of the playoffs.

There are a few positives to the reorganization, however; the eight-team conference means the Jacks are guaranteed a spot in the first round of the playoffs and their travel costs will be significantly lower as they play more games closer to home.

The Jacks are also having success with their entertainment package fundraiser, selling raffle tickets for prizes that include autographed jerseys and tickets to Toronto Maple Leaf, Toronto Raptor and Buffalo Sabres games.

“We’re really encouraged as an organization that we turned a corner last year to improving a lot of things,” Fitzpatrick said.

The Jacks’ training camp opens Aug. 28 at 2 p.m. in St. Clements. Any players interested in coming out can contact Fitzpatrick for more information at 519-656-2970.

Over the years, the two dozen tenants have dwindled to a handful. New owner Michele Khandelwal of Varcan Property Management plans to spruce up the Church Street building, fill it with tenants and make it a draw for Elmira once more.

New owner Michele Khandelwal sees the possibilities for office space and shopping at what was once Brox's Olde Town Village. She's working on refurbishing the building.

Khandelwal plans to turn the upper floor into office spaces for an insurance agent, lawyer, accountant or other financial services. The ground floor is virtually full, with three anchor tenants: Schelter Office Pro, Woolwich Total Health Pharmacy, and the Village Pet Shoppe.

The biggest transformation will occur on the lower level, where Khandelwal envisions a central hallway designed like the main street of a village, with shop windows and storefronts in different colours. The lower level is already equipped with kitchen facilities from the days when it played host to a bar and restaurant, and Khandelwal thinks the space is perfect for a bakery.

“We’d love to get little retail shops down here,” she said.

This is the third commercial property that Khandelwal has bought with the intention of refurbishing and attracting new tenants. She first tried her hand at property management nine years ago, soon after the first of her three children was born. She and her husband bought a student house in Waterloo, and Khandelwal discovered that property management allowed her to balance family and career. She bought a few more student houses and expanded from there into residential and commercial properties.

Khandelwal’s degree in actuarial science wasn’t a lot of help in her new venture; learning to manage properties has been something of a trial-and-error process.

“When we first started, we had no clue,” she chuckled.

Khandelwal has discovered that she prefers commercial properties, and she’s had some success in that line. Last year she bought a building in Kitchener and was able to bring it from 30 per cent occupancy up to 100 per cent.

“We buy a place that needs tender loving care, bring it up, fill it up with tenants and make it a success.”
In the two months that she has owned the Elmira Shopping Village, Khandelwal has given the exterior a facelift: fresh paint on the doors and benches, new landscaping and hanging flower baskets. Work on the interior is now underway, with the public washrooms redone and the basement under renovation.

Now Khandelwal and her assistant Diana Briand are making a concerted effort to find tenants to fill the 20,000-square-foot building, which is divided into spaces ranging from 300 to 2,000 square feet.

Reflecting the mix of commercial and retail uses they’d like to see in the building, the name is changing from Elmira Shopping Village to the Village Shoppes and Business Centre.

Khandelwal said they’re focused on finding businesses that have something to offer to residents of Elmira, and she’s relying on Briand, who grew up in the area.

“We don’t want to make this place just a tourist attraction. We don’t want it to become St. Jacobs.”

The rest of Varcan’s properties are in Kitchener-Waterloo, and Khandelwal explained that it was the potential for growth and the possibilities they could see in the building that drew them to Elmira.

“All of our places are about 10 minutes from where I live. We’ve made an exception for Elmira – it’s 15 minutes.”

Cressman worked at the Elmira library for 40 years before her retirement in 2009. She presided over a number of changes during her tenure, including its expansion in the 1970s, the switch to a computerized catalogue system and recent renovations to make the building wheelchair accessible.

Mary Anne Cressman, who had a welcoming smile for Elmira library patrons for more than four decades, passed away July 25 after a brief bout with cancer.

“The library was a big part of her life for 40 years,” said Cressman’s husband Ron. “I think of her smile and the kindness and dedication to her profession. She was always willing to help people.”

“I think she embodied excellent and compassionate public service. She was welcoming, she always had a smile for people. She had a quiet determination to give everyone a positive experience,” said Katherine Seredynska, manager of public services for the Region of Waterloo Library.

Cressman moved to Elmira in 1966 and started working at the library part time in 1968. The library board was looking for someone with a B.A. and a love of reading, and Cressman fit the bill.

She oversaw two major renovations to the library. In the 1970s, an addition was built onto the Carnegie building while the library operated out of a bookmobile. In 2008, the library operated out of the children’s area while an elevator was installed.

“That was a dream of hers for many years,” Seredynska said. “She was always very cheerful with a change like that. She did a great job of steering everybody through it.”

Seredynska recalls that during the recent renovations, Cressman asked the construction crew to cut a window into the wall so people could see the work progress and it became a huge draw for patrons visiting the library.

Cressman also had a passion for local history and library history. For the library’s 100th anniversary in 1988, she researched and wrote a booklet tracing the history of the Elmira branch from its humble beginnings with eight books donated by the Germanius Society.

Seredynska praised Cressman’s rapport with staff and patrons, noting she always made people feel better.
“You could go in to pay a fine and you felt you were contributing to the library,” she said.

Bette Cummings, children’s librarian at the Elmira branch, said Cressman continued to attend staff parties after her retirement and helped make dolls to raise funds for Haiti after the earthquake. Many library patrons came in this week with memories of Cressman, and added their signatures to a memory book.
The Cressmans enjoyed travelling and had been to Egypt, Europe and Russia. After Mary Anne retired, they travelled to the East Coast to visit family, went to Santa Barbara, California, and were planning to be in western Canada and the Yukon this summer.

“I could look at the itinerary right now and tell you where we’re supposed to be sleeping tonight,” Ron said, noting that Mary Anne liked to have every detail of their trip planned out and organized.

“She’s going to be missed by a lot of people, no one more than me.”

Along with her husband Ron, Cressman is survived by sons Chris (Lisa Harrison) Kirkness of Connecticut, Jeff (Lauren Muir) Cressman of Whitehorse and Scott (Adrienne) Cressman of Burlington; her brother John (Sheila) Stackhouse of Truro, Nova Scotia; brothers and sisters-in-law Ross (Karen) Cressman and Wendy (Peter) Banting; and Peter Kirkness.

The funeral was held Friday at St. James Lutheran Church in Elmira.

The Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society, which operates the Waterloo Central Railway, has been working on steam engine No. 124 at its St. Thomas yard for the past eight years. Now the train is moving to the society’s shop in St. Jacobs for the finishing touches.

The steam engine was transported to Elmira on a special gooseneck flatbed truck and rolled onto the tracks before being pulled to the Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society facility in St. Jacobs by another locomotive.

The small steam engine was built in Kingston in 1930 and used by a construction company that built railway track to move materials. After a stint in lumber country up north, it was bought by retired CN conductor Alex Brown in 1969. Brown kept the locomotive on a short piece of track in his front yard and eventually bequeathed it to SOLRS.

Loaded on a gooseneck flatbed so it was low enough to pass under overhead wires, the locomotive was trucked to Elmira. It isn’t possible to get a truck onto the tracks at St. Jacobs, so the engine was carried to the crossing adjacent to Chemtura.

With the locomotive sitting on pieces of temporary track, the trailer was parked on a slight incline. The chains holding the engine in place were taken off, and with a gentle tug from a diesel locomotive, it came rolling off the flatbed and onto the tracks.

Roy Broadbear, one of the restorers working on the train, estimated the work is 80 per cent complete, with another year or two to go before it’s working the spur line.

Ontario Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell was in Breslau Tuesday morning to make the funding announcement.

“We know the world is hungry for Ontario products,” Mitchell said. “This investment means Conestoga Meat Packers was able to buy new equipment to expand their production capacity.”

Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell (second from right) was in Breslau Tuesday morning to announce $350,000 for Conestoga Meat Packers. On hand for the announcement were Kitchener-Conestoga MPP Leeanna Pendergast, company president Arnold Drung and Bob Hunsberger, chair of the Progressive Pork Producers Co-operative.

Conestoga Meat Packers will be expanding its loin deboning line and selling more boneless loins. Boneless loins command a higher price and expanding the line will mean the creation of 40 new jobs.

The plant has also purchased a ham tumbler, which loosens the skin and softens the muscles, allowing for higher yield on each ham. The one-per-cent improvement in yield doesn’t seem like a lot, said Bob Hunsberger, but it amounts to a significant increase over a year.

Hunsberger is chair of the board for the Progressive Pork Producers Cooperative, which owns Conestoga Meat Packers. The 150-member co-op bought the processor in 2001.

Conestoga Meat Packers processes 14,000 hogs per week and exports to 35 countries, including Japan, United States, South Korea, Philippines, Mexico and Russia.

“In the time the co-op has owned this business, we’ve gone from 35 jobs to 350 jobs and now we’re adding another 40,” Hunsberger said. “All of our members are committed pork producers, so they’re proud of this business.”

The investment is another piece of much-needed good news for the pork industry, which has been struggling for the past few years. Around Easter, the price of pork rose significantly, allowing producers to finally break even after months of negative receipts.

Since 2007, pork producers have been hammered by the high Canadian dollar, which makes Canadian pork less competitive on world markets. Many producers built and invested in their operations counting on the Canadian dollar being at 70 or 80 cents U.S., Hunsberger explained in an interview, which hurt them when the loonie soared past the greenback.

The Canadian dollar is still hovering close to parity but pork prices have risen, thanks to a drop in pork inventories in the U.S. The price jump comes too late for a number of Canadian producers who have left the industry, some of them through the federal government’s hog farm transition program.

“Hog farms are now profitable at current prices, but they have gone through a long period of unprofitability.”

Hunsberger estimates the Ontario hog industry has downsized around 25 per cent over the past few years.
In 2009, Ontario’s pork industry contributed $4 billion to the Canadian economy.

The connection between Campbell and Elmira goes back to 2004, the year Brady lost his friend and teammate Weston deBrouwer in an ATV accident. That December, the annual minor hockey tournament in Blenheim was dedicated to his memory. Knowing none of them would be able to speak about the loss, Brady’s father Brad invited Graham and LuAnn Snyder to the tournament.

Brady Campbell

Graham and LuAnn didn’t know Weston, but they knew what it was like to grieve for a son, having lost their own son Dan in a car accident the year before. In front of 2,000 players and parents that filled the rink to capacity, Graham talked about life and loss and how the two young hockey players, Dan and Weston, were alike.

Graham and Brad Campbell kept in touch over the years with occasional emails, and Graham issued a standing invitation: “If you’re ever in Elmira …”

The Campbells finally took him up on the offer when Brady was invited to the Sugar Kings’ prospect camp in May.

“I got the invitation in the mail and decided that would be a place I wanted to play,” Brady said.

A week before the prospect camp, Brady and his father spent the morning with the Snyders, who took them on a tour of Elmira and the new arena and told them about the team.

“We were barely on the road home and Brady told me that’s where he wanted to play,” Brad said.

The visit happened unbeknownst to the Kings, who had scouted him without realizing there was a connection between the families. When they asked him to sign and told him the Snyders had agreed to billet him, it only made the decision that much easier for Brady.

It’s been seven years now since Dan Snyder died, but he continues to have an impact on his community; last year with the opening of the new arena named in his honour and now by bringing three families together.

“In connecting these events together; it’s as if Brady has the opportunity to thank Elmira and the Snyders for helping Blenheim and the DeBrouwers in 2004,” Brad Campbell said.